Cold
by zeldazonk
Summary: The air was bitterly cold, and to the young man it was welcome. The man with the white roses came every week to the grave where his beloved slept an eternal sleep.


A/N: Got this idea after watching Legends of the Fall, which is a lovely movie.  
  
The air was bitterly cold, the kind that turns your breath to ice, the kind of cold that makes it dance in a thousand silvery particles. He wrapped his coat more firmly, closer, around his wan body and let an ungloved hand grasp a post of the iron fence. The metal underneath his hand was white- hot with its chill, penetrating through his skin. He gasped, feeling bits of flesh tear with the force of his quick recoil.  
  
The gate swung open with an ear-shattering creak, the creak of something that had sat for ages uncared for. Underneath his feet, snow and ice covered the rampant grass and sludge, mud and tears of many years. A willow tree, branches bent as if in mourning, was the sole ornament in this simple plot of land, weighted down with the hard impact of the snow that hadn't ceased to fall since November.  
  
But tonight was still. No wind marred the atmosphere. The sky, a deep midnight blue, was dotted with no stars. Only a pale sliver of the moon lent light to this bedraggled cemetery where he knelt.  
  
With fingers red from the cold, he cleared away the accumulated snow that had gathered on her grave. It was nearly impossible to decipher the letters of her name, numbers of her birth and death dates, for nobody cared for this disappointing burial ground. He worked fiercely to clean her final resting place, shaking uncontrollably for he was ill equipped to face the night's biting chill.  
  
They hadn't the money to bury her in a finer cemetery. And so the woman who'd been paid the highest price for all she had to offer-herself-had been entombed here, in this cheap ground. Her headstone, bought with money scraped together by the one who loved her most, who didn't see her as a prize, read simply, "Satine." It was nothing grand, nothing like the life she had led, although sinfully. He, the man who had been her lover, made sure a priest forgave Satine her sins. This man, too, had been one of the three mourners at her threadbare funeral, his only gift a small bouquet of white roses. White for the purity she longed for, white for the snow.  
  
And he came to visit her once a week. He tended that grave with the dedication of a man searching for gold. Always. His devotion to her was both heartwarming and heartwrenching.  
  
Kneeling beside the white marble headstone, the best his meager funds could buy for her, he bent his head and fought off tears. "Satine," he whispered in a voice ravaged by tears of time, a voice that had once so brilliantly serenaded the dead woman. "Satine, it's me."  
  
"Christian." His mind had long since left him, and to the bewildered man she was speaking to him through the portal that transcends time and death. "You came, Christian."  
  
"I always do." Christian shivered violently. "Satine, it's so very cold here. It's so damn cold; I can't go on like this anymore. I want to be with you."  
  
Snow began to fall in heavy flakes, coating Christian. Snowflakes blinded him, causing the held back tears to fall freely. The cruel freezing state of the weather turned his tears to tiny ice droplets, painful but not as painful as the dull, steady ache in his heart. "Oh, damn, Satine," he managed, teeth chattering like a wind-up toy. "Christian. Just wait."  
  
"Stop taunting me with your 'Just wait'! I don't want to live! Toulouse is dead, you're dead, the Moulin Rouge is dead, Harold's dead. I'm the only link to the past now, and I want to sever it." Christian sobbed, gasping for the air that was only freezing him more. He stared down at his red, chapped hands, hands that had brought to life so many things precious to the both of them. "Please. Satine, I love you so much. I saw a cardinal today, a bird of such vibrant scarlet that it made me weep because that bird was you. You are in everything I see. You are the beauty of a rose, the sadness of a dying child. Everyone in Montmartre is dying. You took our lives with you. Everyone loved you so much."  
  
It hurt now, hurt to close his eyes that were slowly becoming blocks of ice. He wiped at the tears in vain, for they froze in an instant. "So damn cold . . . so damn cold. I must sleep. I'm so tired, Satine." He lay down in the freshly fallen snow beside her, the flowers brittle in his shaking hands. "I must sleep."  
  
Christian would never live to see his son, the son who had been born only minutes before Christian himself would die. He would never live to see the tears of his wife, who had loved him so very, very much. He would never live to see his book published, never see his grandchildren. But he had not lived in vain, for in a few simple months, Christian had changed one person with his love, steady, undying love. That one woman was now calling him home with her angel's song of "Come what may." And that was enough. 


End file.
